Klaviyo vs Mailchimp (2026)

Pick Klaviyo if you run an online store and want your emails and texts to react to what each shopper viewed, bought or left in the cart. It has more than 60 ready-made store flows, segments that use a customer's full order history, and cheaper text messages. Pick Mailchimp if you send newsletters and promotions for a general small business, or if price matters more as your list grows: at 10,000 contacts, Mailchimp Standard is $135 a month against Klaviyo's $150, and at 50,000 the gap is $450 against $720 (prices checked November 4, 2026). Mailchimp is also the one you can trial, with 14 days on a paid plan, and it has a phone app for managing campaigns.

Pricing compared

Both charge by list size and both start free for 250 contacts and 500 emails a month. These are monthly prices in US dollars, checked November 4, 2026, from the price data each vendor's pricing page loads.

Contacts	Klaviyo (Email)	Mailchimp Essentials	Mailchimp Standard
500	$20	$13	$20
1,000	$30	$26.50 (1,500 tier)	$45 (1,500 tier)
2,500	$60	$45	$60
5,000	$100	$75	$100
10,000	$150	$110	$135
25,000	$400	$270	$310
50,000	$720	$385	$450
100,000	$1,380	Not offered	$800

Up to 5,000 contacts, Klaviyo costs the same as Mailchimp Standard or less, and Mailchimp Essentials is cheaper at every size it offers. Above 5,000, Klaviyo becomes the more expensive tool and the gap grows quickly. Mailchimp's Premium plan starts at $350 a month for 10,000 contacts, and Essentials stops at 50,000 contacts.

The two count contacts differently, which narrows the gap for some lists. Klaviyo bills by active profiles, meaning contacts it can email, so suppressed addresses don't count. Mailchimp's help center says subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts all count toward your plan; only archived, cleaned and deleted contacts drop out. If a third of your Mailchimp audience has unsubscribed and you never archive them, you are paying for them.

Send limits are similar. Klaviyo allows about 10 emails per profile a month on most tiers (100,000 emails at 10,000 profiles), Mailchimp Essentials allows 10 times your contacts and Standard 12 times. When a Klaviyo list outgrows its tier, Klaviyo moves you up at the next billing date; Mailchimp bills overages on paid plans and pauses sending on Free.

Klaviyo bills monthly. Mailchimp offers monthly or annual plans, plus Pay As You Go email credits for people who send rarely. Both were running offers on November 4, 2026: Klaviyo takes $19 off the first month of its $20 plan for accounts with no paid plan in the past 12 months, until November 30, 2026, and Mailchimp takes 15% off the first 12 months for lists over 10,000 contacts.

Store automation and segments head to head

Klaviyo's higher price at larger list sizes pays for its store automation. Its template library has more than 60 flows, including welcome series, abandoned cart, browse abandonment, price drop, back in stock and post-purchase follow-ups. Triggers include product viewed, checkout started, order placed, price drop, birthdays and predicted next order date, and each flow can branch by cart value, VIP status, new or returning customer, location or lifetime value. One flow can send an email, then a text, then a push notification.

Klaviyo segments update in real time and can use every order and event on a profile with no look-back limit. You can add predicted lifetime value, churn risk and next order date to a segment, or type a description and let Segments AI build the conditions. Segments sync to ad platforms for retargeting and lookalike audiences.

Mailchimp covers the same ground in a thinner way. Once you connect a supported store (Shopify and WooCommerce top its list of popular integrations), it can send abandoned cart emails and other automated flows, but the plan decides how far you get. Free has no flows, Essentials caps each flow at 4 steps, and Standard and Premium allow up to 200 flow points with branching. Predictive segments arrive on Standard: likelihood to buy in the next 60, 90 or 365 days, predicted lifetime value, time to next purchase and churn risk, all of which need a connected store.

For sign-up forms, Klaviyo has pop-ups, fly-outs, banners, embedded and full-page forms with more than 70 templates, spin-to-win wheels and targeting by segment, cart value or UTM tag. Mailchimp gives every plan pop-up forms, which suit a newsletter sign-up but offer less control. If you stay on Mailchimp and want more form types, Convertful adds pop-ups, scroll boxes, floating bars and inline forms that map fields to Mailchimp merge tags and can stop showing once a visitor subscribes.

Texts, AI and the extras

Klaviyo's text messages run from the same profiles, segments and flows as email, and its free plan includes 150 credits a month to test them. Paid mobile messaging starts at $15 a month for 1,250 credits, and a US text uses 1 credit while a picture message uses 3. Push notifications from your own shopping app are unlimited on every plan.

Mailchimp sells SMS as an add-on for paid plans in selected countries, and you apply and agree to its terms before you can buy credits. The smallest block in its US price data is 1,000 credits for $20 a month. A US text costs 1 credit and a picture message 3, picture messages need Standard or Premium, and unused credits expire at the end of each month.

On AI, Mailchimp Standard and Premium include Intuit Assist for drafting email content at no extra cost; Mailchimp labels it a beta, in English, in selected countries. Klaviyo's Composer agent answers questions about your data and builds segments, campaigns and flows from a prompt, with $5 of use free each month and a paid plan from $20 a month.

Klaviyo also sells products Mailchimp doesn't: Reviews for Shopify and WooCommerce stores (free up to 50 orders a month), a Helpdesk from $10 a month and an AI Customer Agent. Its Personalization add-on, at $100 a month on smaller lists, adds multi-touch attribution, funnels and cohort reports. Mailchimp keeps its extras inside the plans: custom reports and multivariate testing on Standard, and phone support on Premium.

Ease of use and getting started

Mailchimp is the easier tool to start with. You can trial Essentials or Standard for 14 days (Mailchimp asks for payment details and emails a billing reminder before the trial ends), and the free iOS and Android app lets you build and send campaigns, check reports, add contacts and switch on a prebuilt abandoned cart email from your phone. Standard includes one onboarding session and Premium four.

Klaviyo has no trial on its Email plans. Its free plan has no time limit and includes flows, segments, forms and reports, so you can build a full welcome and abandoned cart setup before you pay. Klaviyo runs in a web browser, and its site lists no phone app for managing your account.

The difference after setup comes from the data. Klaviyo's flows and segments are built around carts, products and lifetime value, so they work best with a store connected and orders coming in. If your list is mostly newsletter readers with no purchase history, much of that goes unused and Mailchimp's simpler editor and templates will feel more direct.

Support compared

On paid plans, Mailchimp offers more hours. Essentials and Standard get email and chat support 24/7, and Premium adds phone and priority support. Klaviyo's paid plans get email support 24/7 and human chat 24 hours a day on weekdays, with weekend hours that vary by plan. Klaviyo also sells support packages with faster replies from $500 a month.

On free accounts, Klaviyo gives you longer. Free Klaviyo accounts get email support for their first 60 days and Mailchimp Free accounts for their first 30. After that, both leave you with their help centers, and Klaviyo adds its Academy and Community.

Who each suits

Klaviyo suits Shopify, WooCommerce and Wix stores that already have order data and want it to drive every message: abandoned carts, back-in-stock alerts, win-backs and VIP offers, with texts and push in the same flows. Up to 5,000 contacts it costs the same as Mailchimp Standard or less, and above that it costs more, so a store with a large list should price both before committing.

Mailchimp suits general small businesses, newsletter senders and stores with simple needs that want a lower bill, a trial, 24/7 chat support and a phone app. Pick Standard if you want branching flows and predictive segments; Essentials is fine for scheduled newsletters and a short welcome series.

If you want to see which email, link or source brought in each sale, and you also publish a newsletter, Platformly ties contacts, clicks and sales from Stripe, Paddle, Shopify or WooCommerce together, with five attribution models and paid newsletter subscriptions in the same account. See Platformly's site for current plans. For a cheaper store-focused option, Omnisend is worth a look.